About 8 months ago I actually built a set of TLX tiles (The Oubliette of Peril), and it was freaking awesome, but even with a paper cutter it was an immense amount of work. However, I've used it to great effect a couple times now, one for an epic end-of-tier combat, and another for a vertical arena for a tournament. My players love when I break out the 3D tiles in my campaigns. (You can see work in progress pics and in-action pics for my TLX build here, it's pretty simple: )
With that in mind, I finally took the plunge on some Terraclips now that the dungeon sets were out. I snagged 1x Streets, 1x Buildings, 1x of each Dungeon set, and 3 sets of clips. I just ordered more clips, because, well, MOAR CLIPS. Also, I ordered more streets and more buildings because it's really hard to make an epic multi-tier build with just one set.
I started out by punching out the streets and buildings sets and made a build as I went. It worked out pretty well, with the exception of the Streets of Malifaux stairs/ladder sheet, which was cut incorrectly and pretty well mangled as far as trying to build structures out of (see pictures lower). Everything else was wonderful! Super easy to play with.
First image is the streets/buildings build I threw together on the fly. You can see a 2 story building in the midst of the streets. The back end of the streets has an upper level, and a catwalk and a small building. I apparently cheated for the catwalk at the back and clipped the top of the arches (since I didn't think at the time to attach them to the back wall).
The building allowed me to play with balconies and roofs, and they worked out pretty intuitively, which was great. You can see at the bottom of the next photo I was clipping doors rather than using the stands (since at the time I hadn't figured out the stands existed/what they were). Do NOT recommend doing that. I folded a door that way, as the small doors don't quite have the structural integrity to make it out of the clipping process unscathed. The double doors seem to have a groove for clipping them, however, and the double doors seemed just fine.
More clipped doors, a ladder to the attic, and stairs down. A better look at rooms, balconies, etc.
All 3 layers of the building side-by-side. The roofs I couldn't think of a graceful solution to getting under the roof at the attic without have to deal with unclipping the roof on the fly. Any thoughts there are appreciated.
So in some of the photos you'll notice stairs and ladders. The Buildings of Malifaux versions came out wonderfully. Very easy to punch out and put together, and even without glue they stay together as long as I don't throw them (and really, if my players are throwing my stuff around, I'm killing their characters
). As mentioned before, the Streets of Malifaux versions were cut incorrectly. I managed to mangle a ladder and the big stairs into place with a lot of glue, frustration and not aligned at all cardboard, but the rest were pretty much toast off the bat. In the red circle here (and on the others around it) you can see that the vertical line cut is to the right of the curved cut:And here you can see that the two curved cuts are far too close together and off as well:
I ran out of streets tiles pretty quickly, hence why I'm buying another set
I love how the ramps work. The tabs poking out from underneath the ramp for minis to rest on is absolutely brilliant! The art on the streets and the walls is also fantastic. I'm really excited to build an epic street battle for my players (they'll be assisting in an urban rebellion in October if I've guessed their intentions correctly), and I think I'll be well on my way.With that in mind, my players will be crashing a temple pretty quickly, so I took apart my streets/buildings set and decided to play with the Dungeon Rise: Dungeon Essentials pack. Angled hallways! Lots of props! Epic doorway! This set is fantastic. I haven't even opened the other two yet!
I decided to throw together a build since my players will be hitting said temple in a couple weeks. This time I punched and built everything ahead of time, and planned out my build without clips before clipping it all together. This worked waaaaay better (I had to pull apart the house from the first build 2 or 3 times before I got it right). This build used almost the entirety of the Dungeon Essentials set. I think I had 1 3x3 wall, 2 Long Angled Walls, 4 Short Angled Walls, a couple props, 2 or 3 3x3 tiles, 1 6x6 tile, and a bunch of angled corridors remaining after all was said and done:
The initial build was partly inspired by what I saw on the box art (particularly the upper left room), but once I realized the box art had strange hallways to nowhere in the middle of the build I deviated pretty quickly.
Aforementioned upper left room that was inspired by the box art. I love the pillars, and the little tome is perfect for someone performing a Water Elemental summoning ritual in the room...
The next room was the last one I built, since originally I just had two angled hallways that went straight to the south room, which was dull. So I threw in an office. Note all 4 walls are doorway walls (when I said I was down to like no parts, I wasn't joking!). The bookcases/fireplace do a marvelous job of hiding the doors. Also note, as long as you don't need to connect it to other walls, there's a 3x3 floor acting as a wall on the left hand side of this picture. It does just fine in a pinch. Also note that each major section is attached by a single I-clip. I'll be able to pull this apart section by section and hallway-by-hallway to place as the characters are able to view the rooms as they explore.
Finally the temple proper. Two floors, stairs at the back, a catwalk across the second floor. If you look carefully, I have pillars acting as structural support for the catwalk. It was almost sturdy enough on its own (and considering the only support otherwise is the walls on the edges, that's rather impressive!), but I decided to have the extra help there. I love the stairs in this set, they're gorgeous. You'll also notice I have a angled hallway piece nestled between the temple and the room on the bottom of the photo. Ran out of walls, and that one's illusionary anyhow, so that works well enough. The section is only attached via floor I-clips (though I may switch it out for T-clips to secure the "wall"). I also fixed the left small wall after the fact once I saw it wasn't aligned in this picture
So the Dungeon build was done with a single set. I haven't even opened the other two dungeon sets yet. The second set was much, much easier to build after getting a fair bit of practice on the streets set learning how to put together/pull apart the tiles and clips, how to build in layers effectively that doesn't cause craziness when I have to pull the set apart later, not clipping doors, using the door stands, and so on. I'm super pleased with how the sets have worked out so far (with the exception of the single sheet in the Streets set), and am really excited to see my players play with the sets. And considering how excited I am, I've already ordered more clips, Streets and Buildings, as mentioned earlier.
So yeah, thanks for selling these
I don't get a lot of time to myself with my job being what it is, and the simple TLX set took me about 60 hours or so total to make a basic set of tiles (8x 6x6, 6x 3x3, 2x 6x3, a bunch of connectors, 10x No Warp Walls, 10x Normal Walls, 4x Small No Warp, 4x Small Normal, a couple each of the pillar walls, and a whack of pillars), and even having purchased all the equipment its hard to find time to sit down and bang out another set. Perhaps I'll snag the Feisty Friar props set though and make some props for the Buildings/Streets stuff. Still, given my limited personal time, Terraclips fulfills my needs pretty damn well!
